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May 8, 2012

Snack on these nuggets of training wisdom – taste great, zero calories

Katie Stroud is a “learning solutions engineer” who I met on Twitter many moons and projects-worked-on-together ago. As we chatted this morning about missing being at #ASTD2012 this week, she started saying some things worth repeating.

What follows is a brief interview where you’ll find some tasty nuggets of wisdom you’d do well to savor (in bold for the skimmers). Enjoy.

Roger: I love “learning solutions engineer…”  Tell me about your approach.

Katie: Thank you. I couldn’t use just any ol’ title. Instructional Designer, Consultant, Trainer, or even Training Specialist either imply a narrow field of practice or is too vague to really mean anything.

What I love to do is solve problems. Businesses often throw training at problems, but training isn’t always the solution, and even when it is the solution, it won’t solve the problem unless it’s designed and applied appropriately. Content, timing, audience, motivation, delivery and several other factors must fit together if you really want to make a difference.

I’m an engineer at my core, and I like to think that engineering learning solutions is my way of making the world a better place.

 

Roger: What do you see as the biggest challenge with vILT or live, online presentations?

Katie: Well, that depends. There are at least two sides to any live online presentation or virtual instructor-led training (vILT): the audience and the presenter.

From the audience’s perspective, attending a vILT session or online presentation is a way to cross something off their list and is easily played in the background while they get “real work” done. And for the presenter, it’s a way of providing information to the audience so that they can cross something off their list to meet a business goal. This is the problem.

While more people are embracing online delivery as a viable option for reaching their audiences, many still see online presentations as a waste of time. They often think that to be really effective, they have to do it face-to-face onsite.

As professionals who have seen how valuable an engaging online session can be, we have to change this perception. Doing that means working on those who deliver online presentations and helping them improve their skills. There’s a bit of a learning curve involved, but even small changes in online delivery make a HUGE difference.

Improved online presentations means that audiences look forward to, and even value, being engaged via an online presentation. It means the audience can begin to see the difference between a good presentation and a great one. It means that online presenters and facilitators are faced with overcoming competition, but that’s a good thing because it means that more “great” online presentations are being delivered, and it means that more people can expect more and learn more from attending an online session.

 

Roger: So if many or most online presentations or classes aren’t great, does “mediocre” happen because people don’t know any better? Or do they know better but don’t do what it takes to improve?

Katie: To be honest, I think it’s about time. Whether or not they know better, doing anything better than “mediocre” takes time, and sometimes mediocre is all that’s needed to cross something off the list and say, “Look. I accomplished something today.”

But once people realize that there’s a better way and that improvement means stronger outcomes, then I think they may have trouble sorting out what’s effective. Even more debilitating is the misconception that they have to be graphic designers and movie stars to be effective. You and I know that’s not true, but there was a time when I was in their shoes and I didn’t know where to get started.

 

Roger:  What would you suggest to someone who wants to improve? What’s the best next step they can take?

Katie: For starters, they can start attending 1080 Group webinars! (smiley face) <Roger blushes here>

All joking aside, improving any skill takes commitment and practice. I’m only half-joking about attending 1080 Group webinars. You have a powerful way of demonstrating how it’s done because you practice what you preach. The first step to improving is finding out what’s out there and identifying the little things that take a presentation from good to great.

The next important thing is to realize that we’re talking about more than slide design. In fact, slide design is only a small part of the equation. Producing better online presentations and vILT sessions means improving the whole experience: voice, timing, content structure, and audience engagement are some of the other factors that come together to create a great presentation.

Finally, a great presentation means rehearsal. Great presenters know that rehearsing a presentation is vital to solid delivery. This is true whether you’re face-to-face or behind a computer screen. It doesn’t matter how good you are; practicing really does make perfect. It also helps to ease nervousness and makes unexpected situations easier to handle.

Posted in: Ask, Strategy Continue Reading »

February 1, 2012

Are you ready for mobile webcast attendees?

It’s cool and scary: Your webinar/webcast audience could be joining you from an iPad. Or a phone. Are you ready?

Today’s guest post comes from industry veteran Dan Roche, Vice President of Marketing at TalkPoint Communications.

 

Five Tips for Improving the Effectiveness of Mobile Webcasts

The TalkPoint team has been talking a lot lately about mobile webcasting, its evolution over the past year, and the exponential growth of this platform in 2012 and beyond. To help our customers through this transition, we have developed five tips to make their mobile webcasts more effective.

Get your content and design house in order

Consider the mobile device screen size when developing webcast content. Don’t overload the slides being presented or mobile viewers, especially those using smartphones, may have difficulty digesting the message you are trying to relay.

Emphasize key elements

Although mobile webcasts provide both audio and visual elements, viewers may be accessing the webcast from a variety of locations (e.g. while traveling, in a crowded or busy location, etc.) and may only be listening to the webcast. Therefore, it’s important to highlight important components of your presentation more than once so that “viewers” will be able to recall the main points from the event.

Also, if there is more than one speaker on a webcast event, ensure that the moderator announces who is speaking so that there isn’t confusion over who is providing commentary.

Simplify the registration process

Mobile registrants are typing on a small keyboard, so limiting the data that needs to be entered to join an online event will make it faster and easier for viewers.

Get inside the head of the social media attendee

Social media is a great way to promote a webcasting event. The use of interactive social media “sharing” buttons is particularly effective for mobile webcasts. However, active social media elements like Twitter feeds or Facebook postings can lead to multitasking by the viewer.

Consider your viewer’s screen size, and thoughtfully incorporate interactive social media elements so viewers can fully engage in all aspects of the mobile webcast.

Make sure your webcast is viewable by the mobile-enabled

Provide mobile webcasting viewers with a link to watch/review the webcast at a later date. This provides webcast attendees with another opportunity to access the material from the event.

 

Posted in: Strategy Continue Reading »

August 8, 2011

Getting paid for webinars: 25 ideas for creating differentiation in a world of free

So if “get rich quick” and “webinar” don’t belong in the same sentence, what now?

There are two realities. One, it’s possible to monetize any medium of communication. Two, it’s never easy, and it’s even harder as culture shifts…note the essence of the problem in the question that Simon (from London) asks:

“Thanks for the webinar – very informative. A tricky question but, how is it possible to price or charge for online training when so much good stuff out there is for free? We have both class and online courses for our product but I think that a major barrier for subscribers is cost, even though they may save lots on travel…etc.”

We only look to relatively recent history to see how news outlets struggled with monetizing their content online…but they have. The transformation is part art, part science, and there awesome new winners, some new losers. Research, however, proves people are willing to pay for content online.

So what does drive value when selling your live webinar?

The problem most often is one of differentiation…what is the basis of comparison which your market uses when making a decision?

What follows is not a recipe or theoretical taxonomy. It’s simply a list of ideas that might help you fuel finding the place you differentiate your webinars so people will pay your asking price. To be fair, many are similar, sometimes worded slightly differently. This is important…your marketing may find subtle shifts or changes in positioning or wording important to how they perceive value. And by the way, if you want to see a process for how to tackle this, join me here.

Flexibility of scheduling
Sometimes the problem isn’t the price, it’s the packaging. Moving online opens up how you might package your content because it better suits when your market wants to buy it.

Chunking
Related to flexibility, chunking is taking your content and turning it into smaller pieces. For instance, a (typical) one day seminar is six or six and a half hours of content. Might it be easier for someone to consume and apply if that was four separate sessions of 90 minutes each?

Frequency or “just in time” knowledge
In-person training takes up time to get from place to place. Might online training increase how frequently you can make your offering available?

Accessibility to the content
We’re increasingly a global economy, right? Reality: it’s still not “one world” in many ways. Maybe what you have is of value to part of the world that simply doesn’t otherwise have access.

Accessibility to an expert
I use an example when I do webinars about how to price live, online training (like this one coming up)…one site I found states, right in the promo, that you “get live access to Chuck.” Who’s Chuck? I don’t know, but apparently people in that industry find value knowing they get to ask Chuck questions.

Accessibility to peer or workgroup
One commonality of adult learners: they bring their own experiences to the table. This makes a facilitated discussion, even if you’re the “instructor,” a uniquely irreplaceable event.

Organization
Is there value in how you’ve organized the content? For some fields, it’s not just the content, it’s how it’s arranged that creates value (if not accessibility). Example: I have a hundreds of research reports on various aspects of communications (yes, a complete geek). Some, not all, have been arranged by my assistant into a bibliography. In a world drowning in options and four million hits when they Bing it, you create value by analyzing, organizing, and synthesizing.

Personality
I just returned home from National Speakers Association annual convention (I’m on the board of my local chapter), and as you can expect, many up-and-coming speakers struggle to differentiate themselves. One thing that came up is how to advertise your personality as differentiation. The reality for many who speak on sales or leadership, there are a LOT of others doing it. Sometimes the exact same content is much more palatable if not understandable simply by virtue of who is delivering it.

Indexability/searchability
This applies to the recordings or artifacts of your live sessions, but do you create value by making content easy to find? Some platforms now do this automagically, or like my friends at eventbuilder.com, you can go back to a 2-hr lecture and create your own metatags that become web-searchable.

Interactive visual explanation
Whether PowerPoint, a live software demonstration, or whatever, many times you create a lot of additional value over a blog post with the same “content” because the visual explanation aids understanding. By analogy, you can buy a book on Microsoft Excel for 30 bucks (and it might even have pictures), but that doesn’t put all seminar companies out of business who deliver less information in a seminar…but do so in a different way.

Supplemental connections to in-person training
As I’ve oft said, webinars don’t eliminate other forms of communication. Perhaps you create a program that blends them with your in-person offering.

Curation
Content curators collect, analyze, organize, and otherwise create value because they touch on many of the items above.

Trust in relationship
Do you have a trusted auto mechanic? Why do you buy his/her services relative to other mechanics who could technically deliver the same thing? When you have a new need or question, who do you call? With NOT distinction in “content,” you may be a trusted resource for you market.

Reduced risk
I know one online seminar company who says, “You give us your credit card, but we won’t charge it until after the seminar…if you don’t fully agree that it was of value, you don’t pay.” Maybe you reduce risk because of trust in your brand. Maybe you reduce risk because you let them attend the first of four sessions for free to see if it’s of value.

Updates
Are you developing content over time? Might those updates be available in the future at no additional charge? Might the purchaser audit the same session in the future at no additional charge?

Made-to-order
In many small and medium businesses they often have the flexibility to tailor or personalize products or services to markets, segments, or even individual customers. Might your online training do the same? Example: a signifiant number of elements of what I do apply to sales people, marketers, HR/learning and development, etc. But when I speak to one of those audiences specifically (e.g., talking to a roomful of sales professionals at Ohio University), it’s a missed opportunity to connect and add value to use examples for trainers.

Payments
Micropayments are big. Might your training benefit from being subscription-based or available at $X per month instead of all at once?

Interoperability/alignment
In the world of software, we know that interoperability is important… maybe you teach one time management method and the prospect uses another. Not as good. Or then use the same one. Muy bien.

Testimonials
The exact same online session, marketed with killer testimonials, will bring you more money. Like “trust in relationship” above before you’ve got the relationship.

Time-to-value
Do people who attend your webinar get to a result more quickly than if they read the same info in a book?

Reduced costs or “TCO” (total cost of ownership)
To Simon’s point above, he could point out how much less the cost would be (he doesn’t say if that’s an explicit part of his marketing). If that’s not working, then (like the publishing industry often found), he might find there are other factors that work better for his market. But you very well may have a story about how to reduce costs that’s important and relevant for your market.

Making money
You may very well have a defensible position in telling someone they’ll make more money if attend your webinar. If you want a long-term, sustainable business, being able to articulate a defensible model of how you’ll help someone do this is a completely legitimate way of sharing why they should pay for your webinar. This is different, however, than playing the “fear and greed” card which hawkers are using when they’re telling you how you’re going to get crazy wealthy with webinars.

Brand recognition
Sales trainers, for example…can be had for hundreds or tens of thousands of dollars. Some very good ones aren’t that expensive, but then not all are Jeffrey Gitomer. Brand counts.

Networking, or not
One critical value of in-person events is networking and after hours activities, something online training doesn’t have. Or does it? Many virtual event platforms have networking built in. Many online trainers are connecting people in other forums or social media.

Other business model considerations
The classic “public speaker” business model is “paid for speaking, paid for back of room sales, paid for follow-on consulting/training.” So some people charge for speaking, others speak for free…on the same topic. It’s not a right or wrong, but it’s something you have to take into competitive consideration in your market.

Two final thoughts…

One, if you’re creating value, you have to communicate it.

Two, if you want to see the difference between a blog post full of ideas and a (free) webinar on the very same topic, please join me. And remember one critical thing: I’m not selling you the webinar, I’m suggesting you experience the difference between a blog post and live, interactive webinar. :-)

Posted in: Life Skills, Strategy Continue Reading »

August 1, 2011

7 reasons why webinars won’t make you rich (and how to avoid my mistakes)

My heart breaks. Truly.

Don’t get me wrong: not only do I love webinars, but they’re a uniquely powerful way to connect with audiences. And make money if that’s your business model and you do it right.

Today’s editorial is a response to the growing number of hawkers who take advantage of people who chase shiny objects (like getting rich).  My heart breaks that crap like that creates noise pollution in the legitimate world of communications and content marketing.

Some cold, hard truths (and mistakes you can avoid)…

A webinar is a medium of communication, not a silver bullet
A web conferencing or web casting solution is a means of communication…like a telephone. Did people get rich by figuring out how to use the telephone as a mechanism for selling? Yes. What would you say if you say if the title of the DVD, workshop, or book was “get crazy wealthy with telephones?” My point exactly. Who’s rich today? The people who years ago sold programs like, “How to get rich with your own 900 number.”

Building “products” doesn’t solve your “need an audience or list” problem
“Build it and they will come” makes for cool movie lines, but it’s not so awesome for marketing. If you have an audience who likes your “voice,” you can sell them webinars. And DVDs, and books, and all kinds of stuff. But the world is full of great stuff that isn’t selling.

You don’t have a systematic marketing funnel
Live webinars cost more money than it costs to drive traffic to than other lead-generating things. Why? Because they happen at a date and time. Solution: add someone to your list with something that’s waaaay easier to get a conversion on than a webinar (like a paper, ebook, or other on-demand ‘get it now’ content).

You don’t differentiate the “live” and “on-demand” experiences
Many people have legitimate expertise, but the power of live is that your audience can get questions answered. Most hawkers say, “do it, it’s easy to record, and put a $20 price tag on.” True, it is. But it misses the opportunity to add value by connecting with people. Just like it’s powerful to connect (human to human) in a face to face setting, connecting remotely (human to human) can happen live, but it doesn’t in a recording.

Create more value for your live by being interactive…make them “must be there” “events.” If they’re not, then I don’t need to attend live, and there’s nothing special. In person experiences are important (why are so many trade shows held in Las Vegas?), and online experiences can be just that… otherwise you might as well skip the live webinar and (more easily) create a recording for sale.  Which leads to the next point…

You produce long recordings that aren’t great for how we consume on-demand content
Want a little come-to-truth? Go Google the average view time of online video. True enough, that’s heavily influenced by people clicking video-to-video on YouTube, but here’s the reality: one long lecture is NOT ideal for the adult learning experience. The radically-motivated may sit through it, but even the most astute attention wanders.

Alternative: author content specifically for on-demand consumption, broken up into chunks or chapters. It might be the same 50 minutes of content, but 10 five-minute videos is easier to re-reference than one long recording.  Audio books (even shorter, abridged versions) have chapters. One long webinar recording is less than ideal for consumption. You might sell it once, but if you’re in the content publishing business, you probably want to produce a quality product.

You haven’t figured out an audience, a problem, and how much they’ll pay to fix it
I have presented many times on the business of online training, including how to determine how much your audience will pay. Inevitably a question comes in like, “So how much will people pay for a webinar?” (Politely) I ask, “How much will you pay for a training session?” I know full-day seminars that sell for $99 and other that sell for $2500. Some books sell for $10 and some for $100. So I then ask, “What are you currently charging for training? Let’s start there, then adapt.” They usually don’t know.

Here’s the cold-hard truth…if you know an audience and a problem they’re willing to pay to solve, then a webinar might be a fabulous addition to your revenue mix. It might even be the primary revenue generator for you. But if you’ve not figured that out, you’ve got a bigger problem than “what webinar platform is the best.”

You have an upside down business model
The allure of “see how simple it is to make a recording” is that it’s easy. True enough, it’s easier now than ever to use a webinar to author content. But developing really kick ass content is painfully expensive, if not in terms of your money, then it certainly is in terms of your time.

Here’s a lesson I learned from a software company long ago: let the customer pay to develop it.

Back then IBM was our largest client, and they’d come request a new feature or variation of what we had. Since we didn’t want to be in the “custom software development business,” the business-model question was “can we sell this feature or service to someone else? Is there a market for it?” If the answer was yes to both questions, then we’d take their money and do the development. Then we had something we could sell to someone else, we’d made a profit margin on the original development, and could package/price/position the offer for others. Note, however, this is diametrically opposite “build it and then go try to sell it.”

If you want to write a book, you could spend six months and many thousands of dollars to get it out the door, only to then try to make your money at $25 each. Sell someone the content, get them to pay for developing it, and now you’re making money on each additional $25. Same with webinars.

The bottom line

Please don’t get me wrong. I’m as excited about webinars as when I got into the business in 1999. It’s just that my heart’s breaking now that the industry has gotten big enough to attract the hawkers.

The good news (I hope)? I’ve made every one of the mistakes above. Painfully. You really can make good money as a speaker, trainer, consultant using webinars as your communication medium. You really can create on-demand content that sells in your sleep and leverages your time. And if a few of you avoid the trap, save some heartache and money, and then pay it forward to someone else who needs the message, I’m a happy dude.

Now go get rich.

Roger

P.S. Are you speaker who wants to dive into it for real? Read this

Posted in: Business, Life Skills, Strategy Continue Reading »

July 21, 2011

How to get your questions answered in gianormous webcasts

Assuming you’re not a stalker, sometimes you really, really, really want to get a question answered during a seriously big webinar.

I just finished co-presenting on a webinar for The Marketer, and to their deep credit, the “sold out” the room!

As I was watching the questions flood in from the quadruple-digit number of attendees who honored us with their time, I was struck with compassion for those who sincerely wanted to get their question answered…and couldn’t.

This post is for you. Since at 1080 Group we focus on behavioral analysis of the live-but-remote communication experience, here are a few tips for attendees.

Ask a question that’s relevant to a broad part of the audience
The reality is that only the tiniest percentage of questions are going to get answered in a big audience, and typically the moderator is going to focus on those that will be most useful for most of the audience. If your question is, “What about social media tactics for Hungarian shoe shine shops,” see the next point.

Ask directly of the presenter…after the fact
This may not work with the uber-megastars, but many or most presenters will respond to you if you send them an email. Especially in B2B. Me…I love to help (it’s my biggest fault as a business leader), and I always respond.

Ask it late
When questions are flooding in, the moderator has to go hunting for questions. Make it easy for them to see yours (during the Q&A at the end), and you’re more likely to get a response.

Ask it again
If you asked a question while speaker #1 was presenting and it didn’t get answered, ask it again. See the previous point.

Name who the question is directed to
This is for webinars where there are multiple speakers (like the one I just co-presented at)…start your question with “Q for Roger: What do you think about Tottenham’s footballing chances this year?”

Do you have other tactics that have worked for you? Do share.

All my best to your pursuit of learning.

Posted in: From the Attendee's perspective, Promotion, Strategy Continue Reading »

June 29, 2011

What to do before you step onto the stage…

Two facts are true for any performance:
1)    The show must go on
2)    Life goes on independently of the show

When you get that last minute call from your boss or you read an incoming email from an irate customer, the show must still go on. Professional athletes, actors, musicians, and yes, professional speakers have some sort of pre-show ritual to get them into the ‘zone’ despite whatever life throws their way.

Have a routine

Whether it’s a breathing exercise, meditation, or a pep talk you give yourself in front of a mirror, develop a routine that shifts your mental energy to being ‘on stage.’

Have a checklist ..and own it

Something almost inevitably will go wrong. When it does, will you remember everything you need to do?  A checklist can help you remember things like having a glass of water ready or more important things like shutting down all desktop applications.

Whether you make a checklist of your own or the webinar planner provides you with one (or it’s a combination of the two), own it. Review it and organize it so that it 1) makes sense in a way that you see how one task flows into the next, and 2) so that it has a sense of timing.

Have a backup copy of your slides

There are two reasons to print a copy of your slides:

Risk Management: It’s not a matter of if, but when you’ll experience an internet slow-down or some other kind of latency or visual freeze. When it happens, you’ll want a copy of your slides on had to refer to. In addition to a backup copy, you’ll want a teammate on standby to advance slides if something goes wrong.

Access to Notes: Print the ‘notes’ version so that all those annotations and reminders are at your fingertips. Moving all that text off your screen makes room for you to use the tools that help you keep an ‘eye’ on your audience. Investing in your audience is investing in your success.

Take a moment to slow down

As show time nears, your adrenaline may start pumping and you’ll have a tendency to speed up. The challenge is that you risk breezing past important points. In getting ready for the mic, practice slowing down.

Have a cup o’…never mind

Caffeine can compound the affects of adrenaline. If you take in a lot of caffeine, you probably don’t notice the effects it has on your nervous system. Even if it doesn’t give you the jitters, it may affect you in other ways like making vocal variation more difficult to control. Moderate your caffeine intake before a show.

The bottom line

As inevitably as the show starts it also inevitably ends. If you’re rehearsed your presentation, and spent some time ‘backstage’ getting ready, you’ll have fun and you’ll deliver like a rock star. The audience came to see what you have to say, and if you’re doing things the 1080 Group way, you’ll have an experience for them that will knock them off their socks.

Go be a rock star.

Guest post by Katie Stroud, a learning solutions engineer and 1080 Group rockstar. Learn more about her here.

Posted in: Content, Delivery, Design, Presentation Planning, Promotion, Strategy Continue Reading »

June 6, 2011

Aristotle’s advice on improving your registration forms

Guest post:  Donnie Bryant

Although webinars are a relatively new technological development in the big picture, centuries-old wisdom can still shape the way you approach producing and promoting them.

I think that most webinar promoters would agree that getting people to register to attend is one of the most challenging aspects of the whole process. If you had to sell a prospective attendee on your webinar with your registration form alone, how would your registration copy perform? What if that was your only shot to convince a prospect to sign up for your event?

Would it work?

Thankfully, this is not usually the case. You’ll probably have multiple opportunities to win your audience over. But let’s pretend for a few moments that you could only touch the prospect once. If you had to take him from introduction to registration on a single landing page, how would you do it?

An Ancient 3-Hit Combo

Aristotle’s Rhetoric is the original tome on persuasive communication. Over 2 millennia later, it’s still considered to be one of the best works on the subject. The philosopher describes the three major components of persuasion: ethos, pathos and logos. Let’s apply these principles to kick your registration copy up a notch.

Ethos is your ability to convey personal credibility. That’s first and foremost on the agenda. No one pays attention to people who are “just talking.” You must prove that you know what you’re talking about and that you’ll be able to help the reader obtain what he’s looking for.

On your registration form, don’t assume that everyone knows you and your history. Or that they read the invitation email before they clicked through. Give evidence of your expertise. Your prospects will want to know about your many years of experience, your hundreds of satisfied customers, and all the awards you’ve won.

Make the strongest possible statements about why you are an authority the reader can trust. Without credibility, nothing else you say will matter.

Pathos is passion. Have you ever noticed that passionate speaking moves those that hear it, even if they don’t agree with what’s being said. As human beings, we can’t help it. Emotion begets emotion.

Listen to Mark Cuban talk about his Dallas Mavericks. It’s hard not to be a fan, even if you don’t like basketball. His pathos is contagious.

A registration form needs to be more than a place to collect information. Pretend you won’t get any other chances to share your enthusiasm. Don’t make the mistake of being too reserved. It’s not unprofessional to speak with feeling.

Registration copy should not only express passion for the topic being addressed, but it should also seek to evoke an emotional response in the reader.

Logos is the root word for “logic.” It is the use of persuasive arguments to appeal to the audience’s rationality. Pathos strikes at the heart, while logos shoots for the head.

We know that purchasing decisions are mostly emotional. People buy what they want. But the marketer or salesman that can give them rational reasons to justify their emotional choices will be incredibly effective.

Logos tells the reader why signing up for your webinar is a smart idea. Lay out every benefit and make every big promise that you can honestly make.

Don’t forget: benefit bullets are attractive to the eye. They are a great way to call out your logical “reasons-why.”

Putting It All Together

Ethos, pathos and logos build on each other, working together to form a compelling psychological magnet for your target audience.

Ethos is most important at the beginning of the registration copy.

Logos uses that foundation of credibility to win the battle for the mind with persuasive, rational argument. You’ll use it to form the majority of the body copy, right down to the call to action at the end.

And because you’re passionate about the theme of your webinar, pathos should naturally infuse the registration form. Don’t hold it back!

Aristotle didn’t have access to the internet, telecommunications, or even electricity. But he still has some keen insights into getting increasing webinar registrations.

Donnie Bryant is a results-driven copywriter who hails from Chi-town who’s crazy enough to think that getting someone to take action to attend your webinar requires the same discipline. Learn more about DB here.

Posted in: Business, Design, Promotion, Strategy, Web Seminar Promotion Continue Reading »

March 21, 2011

What does it take to “engage” a webinar audience?

Engagement is a hot topic.  Web site developers, human resources & L&D folk, and even webinar presenters…all realize that in today’s change-the-channel world, we’ve got to get and keep attention.  Or we lose.

Here’s the bad news:

As I’ve addressed many times, engagement in a webinar isn’t “pushing a poll” at someone.  It’s multi-dimensional, and it happens throughout the whole webinar.

Sounds hard, right?

Yes, and no.  The answer is simple, but learning and growing (read:  becoming a pro) takes time.  Here’s where to start:

Create whole-brain content
Research supports the fact that we’ve got to appeal to both sides of the brain if we want to optimize the impact of our messages.  It has to be logical or we miss the opportunity to help them “get it.”  But content also has to have an emotional connection (e.g., “wow!  here’s why I should take some action to <avoid continuing pain or gain something beneficial or both>).  My own research has shown that content is still the number one reason people show up to and stay engaged in webinars. (Catch some of that in this report licensed by the good folks at ReadyTalk)

Amateurs create info-barf.  Pros construct data and story into clear, interesting, and compelling Point-A-to-Point-B whole-brain content.

Deliver a holistic sensory experience
Your audience is hearing something, seeing something, and maybe doing something.  You’ve got to use your voice effectively, deliver something visual that’s worth watching, and interact with them naturally.  This may include a poll, but it may not.

Amateurs think about tools.  Pros adapt to a new set of tools to deliver facilitate experiences.

Facilitate natural interactions
For most presenters and audiences, talking with another human being or group is fairly natural…until we have a new set of tools through which to do it.  The responsibility, therefore, is yours to guide the experience.

The key here is that unless you’re delivering a one-way lecture or keynote address, people connect with people (you and each other).  If you’re not doing that in your web seminars, you’re likely missing an opportunity.

Amateurs talk AT people.  Pros learn to talk WITH people in a new way.

The bottom line
You’re not a “pro” because you make a full-time living doing it.  You’re a pro when you’ve got an attitude of self-improvement.

Engagement isn’t a thing you place in an event like an object (e.g., a poll) or at a pre-defined interval (e.g., “every 9 minutes”).  It’s a skill that you work on and grow…and when your audience is one click away from “changing the channel,” you’d better figure out how to get and keep attention throughout.

If not, you’re going to be like a television playing in the background, not the main focus of the person you’re trying to reach.  And sooner or later “noise” gets turned off.  Game over.

Engagement starts with attitude.  Be a pro.

Posted in: Content, Delivery, Design, Presentation Planning, Strategy Continue Reading »

March 18, 2011

What do I do if partners use PowerPoint like documents?

If you can believe it, my new partners insist on writing consulting proposals in PowerPoint, and then using the proposal for the presentation. Any suggestions on how I can convince them to avoid this practice? -Steve H.

Steve, I do believe it.  A couple thoughts:

Pick the right battles
The reality is that people can and do use PowerPoint as documents. Honestly, I’m not going to argue this point…the division I worked in at Microsoft did the same thing. Whether it’s PowerPoint or Word in landscape format or some other software, the key here is that documents are documents…consciously.

Remember that there’s a difference between collaborating and presenting
To be fair, meetings are places where you discuss, collaborate, analyze together, and web conferencing is a great tool for virtual meetings.  The difference between collaborating and presenting is behavioral.  A presentation isn’t a document or even slides, it’s what you do to educate or persuade an audience from a starting situation (Point A) to an outcome or action (Point B).  Yes, it IS confusing that “presentation” has such a broad and indefinite meaning, so focus on the purpose of the communication, not the tools.

Make sure your own presentations demonstrate best practices
As you heard me say in the webinar, create presentations, not documents.  We won’t change the world overnight, but we can be part of the solution, not the problem. The reality is that much of our learning as adults is experiential…and it’s likely your partners are doing something they’ve seen over and over.  It’s like a new golfer learning to play by listening to Uncle Joe who plays every week, but Uncle Joe’s a hack.  The result is perpetuating the badness.

Find your own best process to create presentations and documents/handouts
Here’s what I do…as I outline a presentation, I’m creating the basis for the handout that summarizes the key points I made.  I don’t to have the handout/leave behind mimic every story, every comment, every nuance…it’d be 20 pages long.  Then I transfer the concepts to PowerPoint and start adding the visuals that tell the story.  Sometimes that transfer is word-for-word (like the key points), but much of the time the concept is represented visually (in a way that would read poorly or not-at-all as a document).  In the end I’ve got a presentation that’s the best audio-visual experience I can produce, and I’ve got an document that reads a lot better than someone trying to look at a pile of slides in a .pdf.

Steve, if you’re even asking the question, you’re already on the right track!  Stick with it, and good luck!

Posted in: Ask, Design, Presentation Planning, Strategy Continue Reading »

March 15, 2011

Win an iPad2 – best practices in video conferencing survey

Your goal is to really rock your virtual presentations and meetings.  I know that already, because if you weren’t professional enough to pursue personal growth, you wouldn’t read this blog.  I share the same commitment, including uncovering behavioral data that goes beyond simplistic “6-tips-for-better-meetings” blog posts.

And that’s why I’m excited about partnering with Citrix GoToMeeting on this survey to uncover the good, bad, and ugly in video conferencing.  And besides getting to see the responses at the end, you get a shot at winning an Apple iPad2.

Here’s where you’re going:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/VidConfSurvey

Posted in: Case Studies, Content, Promotion, Strategy Continue Reading »

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